WASHINGTON POST:The Continuing Political Decline Of Hillary Clinton. “If it weren’t for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would be the most disliked major-party presidential nominee in recent American history. That qualifier, of course, is important here. Clinton doesn’t need to be liked; she needs to be liked slightly more than Trump in what will very likely boil down to a two-candidate race. But it’s hard to overstate just how bad Clinton’s numbers are. And a new Washington Post-ABC News poll is the latest to suggest they just keep getting worse — so much so that they are in some ways about as bad as Trump’s.”
SOCIALISM: Middle-class Venezuelans liquidate savings to stockpile food. “‘This is money we had been saving for an emergency, and this is an emergency,’ Ramirez said. ‘It’s scary to spend it, but we’re finding less food each day and we need to prepare for what’s coming.'”
The U.S. military said it detected launches of what it believed were two Scud missiles and one Rodong, a home-grown missile based on Soviet-era Scud technology.
North Korea has fired both types numerous times in recent years, an indication that unlike recent launches that were seen as efforts by the North to improve its missile capability, Tuesday’s were meant as a show of force.
Scuds are notoriously inaccurate and based on Soviet technology dating back to the late ’50s. Firing off three, or even a dozen of them, isn’t much of a display of force. What seems more likely is that Kim wants to bait South Korea into installing US-made THAAD anti-missile systems, then using his agents, dupes, and useful idiots in the South to try and gin up enough protests to destabilize the government in Seoul.
What is most striking about Mr. Yox’s as-applied challenge . . . is the fact that he has been authorized to possess and use, and has in fact possessed and used, firearms while he served in the military and while he worked as a state correctional officer in Pennsylvania. Indeed, Mr. Yox used fully automatic rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and incendiary grenades while serving in the 82nd Airborne of the United States Army. Again, Defendants have submitted no evidence that Mr. Yox misused firearms or acted in a dangerous manner in those professional capacities. Thus, the record indicates that throughout his adulthood, despite his personal firearms disability due to § 922(g)(4), Mr. Yox has possessed and used firearms in his professional capacity without incident.
Further, it is noteworthy that a state court has already found Mr. Yox to not be a continuing threat to himself or others. As detailed earlier, in May 2014, a Pennsylvania state court reviewed Mr. Yox’s petition to vacate and expunge his involuntary commitment and issued an order granting him state relief from any disability imposed pursuant to state law. The judge found that “[t]he Petitioner no longer suffers from the mental health condition that was the basis for his commitments” and “[t]he Petitioner may safely possess a firearm without risk to himself or any other person.”
What’s really striking is that the Government tried to argue that the guy it permitted to carry weapons was too dangerous to own a gun.
Most democratic governments – including the United States – condemned the attempted recent military coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and welcomed its failure, citing the need to respect Turkey’s “democratic” institutions. But in the aftermath, Erdogan took the opportunity to persecute his political opponents on a large scale, including firing thousands of judges who might constrain his authoritarian tendencies. Erdogan’s government was also severely undermining civil liberties long before the coup, even going so far as to pass a law criminalizing “insults” to the president, under which hundreds of people have been prosecuted. Erdogan’s own commitment own commitment to democracy is questionable, at best. He famously once called democracy a tram that “[y]ou ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
This raises the question of whether the coup attempt against Erdogan might have been justified. More generally, is it ever justified to forcibly overthrow a democratic government? In this 2013 post, written after the successful military coup against Egypt’s radical Islamist government, I argued that the answer is sometimes “yes.” There should be a strong presumption against forcibly removing a democratic regime. But that presumption might be overcome if the government in question poses a grave threat to human rights, or is likely to destroy democracy itself by shutting down future political competition.
Being elected democratically is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for acting dictatorially.
I should note that Sheriff Jones has been very admirable in the adoption of officer body cams, and in punishing officers caught engaging in unnecessary violence.
If I was Trump I’d fire the speechwriter(s) involved and absolutely go on the “how dare you attack my wife” offensive when dealing with the media storm, ala George H.W. Bush pushing back against Dan Rather in 1998. As in ’88, Trump’s base will absolutely love it, and hopefully the media will be so incensed at the Donald, they’ll quickly forget this minor not-ready-for-primetime gaffe.
Related: Like jazz musicians in an after-hour jam sessions, what’s wrong with friends trading the same riffs back and forth? Matt Drudge notes that Obama “borrowed” his “words, just words” leitmotif near word for word from Deval Patrick.
Without much fanfare, Obama has dramatically reversed his Iraq policy — sending thousands of troops back in the country after he declared the war over, engaging in ground combat despite initially promising that his strategy “will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Well, they’re on foreign soil, and they’re fighting.
It would have been easier — and would have cost far fewer lives — if we had just stayed. But Obama had to have a campaign issue.
And I suppose I should repeat my Iraq War history lesson: Things were going so well as late as 2010 that the Obama Administration was bragging about Iraq as one of its big foreign policy successes.
In the interest of historical accuracy, I think I’ll repeat this post again:
[Y]ou certainly can make a persuasive argument it was a mistake. But there is a time that line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don’t let anyone stretch the case on WMD. And he was the one who was skeptical. And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two. And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months. And so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence. But there was no lying in this that I could find.
Plus:
Woodward was also asked if it was a mistake to withdraw in 2011. Wallace points out that Obama has said that he tried to negotiate a status of forces agreement but did not succeed, but “A lot of people think he really didn’t want to keep any troops there.” Woodward agrees that Obama didn’t want to keep troops there and elaborates:
Look, Obama does not like war. But as you look back on this, the argument from the military was, let’s keep 10,000, 15,000 troops there as an insurance policy. And we all know insurance policies make sense. We have 30,000 troops or more in South Korea still 65 years or so after the war. When you are a superpower, you have to buy these insurance policies. And he didn’t in this case. I don’t think you can say everything is because of that decision, but clearly a factor.
We had some woeful laughs about the insurance policies metaphor. Everyone knows they make sense, but it’s still hard to get people to buy them. They want to think things might just work out, so why pay for the insurance? It’s the old “young invincibles” problem that underlies Obamcare.
Obama blew it in Iraq, which is in chaos, and in Syria, which is in chaos, and in Libya, which is in chaos. A little history:
As late as 2010, things were going so well in Iraq that Obama and Biden were bragging. Now, after Obama’s politically-motivated pullout and disengagement, the whole thing’s fallen apart. This is near-criminal neglect and incompetence, and an awful lot of people will pay a steep price for the Obama Administration’s fecklessness.
Yes, I keep repeating this stuff. Because it bears repeating. In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him. Whenever you see anyone in the media bringing up 2003, you will know that they are serving as palace guard, not as press.
THE ONGOING PROVOCATIONS BY THE COMMUNIST FRONT GROUP: (What? That’s news to you? You probably also thought ANSWER was legit!) Baton Rouge shooter identified, and his belief system is no surprise. Nation of Islam is not arguably Islam. It is also arguably MORE poisonous, as (I read the books) it classifies white people as demon spawn. OTOH BLM is pretty much one of those provocation-groups hoping to create chaos which leads to more government control of the people.
THE ONGOING, DESPERATE PROVOCATION: The Bolsheviks know only one way to revolution and power. Find aggrieved minority, form false movement of said minority, have them commit more and more outrageous chaos-inducing transgressions until the government oversteps and kills vast numbers of them. Then use that as a vehicle to power. They don’t realize in the states they’re not playing with the government (who might be largely on their side.) No, they’re juggling fire in a powder keg. Baton Rouge shooter identified, and his belief system is no surprise.
When presidents enter office, they bring with them about 6,000 people. From the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and White House assistants down to the lowliest Justice Department lawyer, Mrs. Clinton would fill her government with people who get up each day looking to tax, spend, regulate—and use the federal government to stomp on anyone in their way.
At a time when so much of American “law”—from the Health and Human Service’s contraceptive mandate, to the Education Department’s “Dear Colleague” letters on transgender policy, to the National Labor Relations Board’s prosecution of Boeing for opening a new plant in South Carolina instead of in Washington state—is decided by faceless federal bureaucrats, Mrs. Clinton would stuff these federal agencies from top to bottom with Lois Lerners and Elizabeth Warrens.
Welcome to 21st-century American liberalism, which no longer even pretends to produce results. Whatever the shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s people, non-progressives simply do not share the itch to use the government to boss everyone else around. On top of this, an overreaching President Trump would not be excused by the press and would face both Republican and Democratic opposition.
Fair enough to argue that Mr. Trump represents a huge risk. But honesty requires that this risk be weighed against a clear-eyed look at the certainties a Hillary Clinton administration would bring.
And, of course, the press, and the “Deep State,” will keep Trump in check in a way they’d never do with Hillary.
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